Archive for date:
October, 2013

Published on: Wednesday, 30 October, 2013

A big wind hitting Britain today does less harm than in past centuries

My Times article on the storm that was to hit
Britain on 28 October. In the event, four or five people died.
Disruption to transport lasted only a few days.

If you are reading this with the hatches battened
down, it may not be much comfort to know that 2013 has been an
unusually quiet year for big storms. For the first time in 45 years
no hurricane above Category 1 has made landfall from the Atlantic
by this date, and only two in that category, confounding an
official US government forecast of six to nine hurricanes in the
Atlantic, three to five of which would be big. Even if the last
month of the hurricane season is bad, it will have been a quiet
year.

Published on: Sunday, 27 October, 2013

Regulation has driven up the price

My Times article:

The real problem with nuclear power is the scale of it. After
decades of cost inflation, driven mostly by regulations to redouble
safety, 1600 megawatt monsters cost so much and take so long to
build that only governments can afford to borrow the money to build
them. Since Britain borrowing £14 billion extra is not really an
option, then we have to find somebody else’s nationalized industry
to do it, and guarantee high returns, as if it were a big PFI
contract.

Published on: Friday, 18 October, 2013

Published on: Sunday, 13 October, 2013

Don't treat e-cigarettes as medicines; glamorise them

My Times column tackles an egregious example of
regulation doing more harm than good:

Should shampoo be classified as a medicine and prescribed by
doctors? It can, after all, cause harm: it can sting your eyes and
a recent study found traces of carcinogens in 98 shampoo
products. Sure, shampoo can clean hair if used responsibly. But
what’s to stop cowboy shampoo makers selling dangerous shampoo to
the young? Far too many shampoo manufacturers try to glamorize
their product. Time for the state to step in.

Published on: Monday, 07 October, 2013

The law that has changed our lives most in the
past 50 years may be about to be repealed, even though it was never
even on the statute book. I am referring to Moore’s Law, which
decrees — well, observes — that a given amount of computing power
halves in cost every two years.

Robert Colwell, the former chief architect at Intel and head of
something with a very long name in the US Government (honestly,
you’d turn the page if I spelt it out, though now I’ve taken up
even more space not telling you; maybe I will put it at the end),
made a speech recently saying that in less than a
decade, Moore’s Law will come to a halt.

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